books.google.no - After the death of Syria‘s President Hafez al-Assad in mid-2000 hopes were high that his son and successor, Bashar, might succeed in reforming a system that had become a byword for economic stagnation and the pitiless repression of dissent. For six months, and for the first time in decades, Syrians...http://books.google.no/books/about/Syria.html?hl=no&id=dFdbVVcKsSIC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareSyria